


milky way

by LadyPrince



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Experimental Style, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-27 07:51:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18191804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyPrince/pseuds/LadyPrince
Summary: Even Shiro, the Garrison Golden Boy, wants a moment of escapism. Keith can understand that. He can more than understand that, if it's for Shiro.





	milky way

**Author's Note:**

> Written while listening to, ["you're gonna sleep and have crazy good dreams tonight."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC5RRc3Znco)
> 
> I was reading _Watchmen_ for my essay for university, and I got to Dr. Manhattan's part in it and that part made me feel introspective. I wanted to write a balcony scene between Keith and Shiro after I finished feeling introspective, and the only specific thoughts I had at the time were "the Andromeda Galaxy" and "car mechanic."
> 
> That's all.

There are very few days in which Takashi Shirogane is not working. Keith is his number one witness to it; over and over he has seen him with papers in hand, sometimes his tablet with him when he wants to transfer physical to digital, and over and over he has tried to convince Shiro to do something with him that isn’t _work, work, work._ Often times Shiro is patient, telling Keith gently, with the corner of his eyes crinkling and his smile infectious, that he can’t just abandon his work right now. He has lots to do, lots of homework, reports, essays, everything. It is more irritating than Keith wants to admit, but his face shows it all judging by how Shiro laughs and pinches his nose, telling him to, “lose the frown, turn it upside down, or you’ll be a grumpy clown!”

Yet, the times where Shiro is obtusely responsible will be inevitably, rarely, complemented by moments in which he slams his tablet down onto its keyboard and tells Keith – with barely held back _human_ irritation – that, “you know what? Yes. I am going to take a break, and I’m _not_ going to feel bad about it.” something tells him that those moments of abnormal frustration are born of student-guilt and perfectionism cracking open to let spill a young man just wanting to get away from the academic, military life.

Those are normally the times when his boyfriend is too busy to talk to, too busy to hang out with, and Shiro doesn’t want to do something safe with Adam. Keith doesn’t mind it – they hang out as friends when Shiro isn’t working, so it isn’t like he is being treated as a replacement. No, if Keith is to be honest with himself – seldom is, doesn’t talk to himself at all – then he will admit, to the confrontational voice in his heart, that he doesn’t mind being the runaway fantasy that Shiro whispers to him underneath moon-bathed starlight.

He is the fire nipping at Shiro’s shins, lapping against his skin until it tinges red and he can’t be ignored, and Keith leads him away from the mundanity of the life he loves so much. Always temporary, but Shiro wants to make him permanent. Sand shifts and will be, inevitably, blown away by the winds of the upcoming winter, and Keith will be gone with them someday. Shiro wants him to be the heavy sands in endless summer countries, forming shapes of dunes and carrying with himself mirages, and Keith thinks he will be.

Thinking too much will be Keith’s downfall, a habit he has picked up from Shiro. One of many that he has picked up from Shiro. Not one of the good ones, if you ask him and he is feeling generous enough to answer.

Not one of the good ones.

* * *

Shiro takes him to the roofs sometimes, during nights that are cold unless it is the blistering summer, and Keith finds the glimmering stars even farther away as he settles in marginally closer to them. Shiro always wears his uniform when he sneaks them away, with bags settling heavy on his eyelids and his eyes are dulled with the need to sleep, and still he sequesters them both away up to the roofs.

“If I go back to my room to change, I’ll fall asleep immediately.” is what Shiro tells him when Keith asks, his palms pressing downwards against each other and his face twitching with a sweet smile even as a deep-boned weariness drags at his skin. “So, I’ll just go back and change to something more casual when we’re done stargazing.” he doesn’t say anything else to that, just accepts the answer he gets and stares up at the glimmering sky over an abandoned desert.

Comfortable silence always becomes their third companion, disappearing for brief moments when Shiro starts talking about his day, week, class, life, or tries to prompt him into naming constellations they both know very well. Keith speaks softer than Shiro, always, and forces him to speak louder for it – tries to drown away the silence, even though they both know it isn’t terrible, awkward.

Shiro just likes to talk to him. Keith likes to listen and, if he can have it his way, never reply. But questions and prompting roll and fall off of Shiro’s tongue constantly, soundwaves joining in with the rest and Keith wants to focus on that, on the physics of it. Not the social aspect.

When Shiro asks him, “how did your day go? Were you on your best behaviour?”, he answers even if he doesn’t want to. When Shiro asks, “did simulations go well? I didn’t hear a complaint from the teachers today, so… did they?”, he grunts then murmurs a response that Shiro hears in the end. When Shiro asks, “are you ready for your midterms? Did you finish your essays?”, Keith tells him the truth: he is ready, and he has submitted his essay already.

“You should have let me proofread it for you.” he says a bit sharply, his features smoothing out into something apologetic even before he is finished speaking, his mouth moving without him, and Keith shakes his head.

Companionable quietude greets them once more as it raises its head out of the sea of voices that Shiro created and Keith welcomes it in. When Shiro is about to fall asleep on the roof, his body sliding down a little, that silence is broken once more for Keith to shake him, tell him, “wake up, you’re gonna fall,” and Shiro will always groggily right himself again. “Go to bed,” Keith says. “You sleep too,” Shiro replies, but he obliges and begins to work his way off the roof.

Keith follows minutes later, avoids being seen and caught with Shiro, and slinks back into his room to sleep and wake up every hour to avoid dreams. They imprison him still, and Keith goes through the next day as if he has slept a full nine-hours.

* * *

“You know that office with the balcony, next to Admiral Sanda’s office?” Shiro wakes him up one morning with that question. When Keith checks the clock, it is four-twenty two in the morning, an extremely specific hour, and he squints at Shiro while trying to gather his bearings. A minute passes, the question is repeated back to him, and Keith eventually nods his sinking head in response. “Let’s go there.”

He rubs at his eyes. “We don’t have the access –” Shiro drops something onto Keith’s exposed stomach, his shirt having hiked up to bare skin, and he jolts at the feeling of a card sticking to him. He lifts it off of his belly to look at the access card, sees blank-grey with orange lines on the front and a long barcode on the back, and he looks at Shiro.

There is a mischievous grin on his face, eyes sparking wide. “That’s how I kinda broke into your room, sorry.” it doesn’t make a difference. Keith has given Shiro his original key-card, lying to him that it is an extra, and lying to his superiors that his old one has been destroyed because of a mistake made. The superiors don’t question it, given Keith’s reputation, but they are still stern with him when they remind him not to do this again. “It’ll open even Admiral Sanda’s office,” Shiro says casually, fingers curling into claws on Keith’s cheap blanket, “and it’ll open the one next to hers.”

It takes them less than fifteen minutes to get to the office, with Keith carefully guiding them around camera blind-spots so that Shiro won’t get in trouble, and it is with a simple tap of the card that they are in the minimalist office. Nothing personal lines the office up; the bookshelves are empty, there are no trophies sitting in their stand, and there are no plaques on the wall commending someone.

This office is empty, probably waiting for a new owner. Shiro walks past the eerily clean desk, opens up the balcony door to let in a rush of cold air, and he steps outside without waiting for his shadow. Keith trails in quietly regardless, settles next to Shiro, and stares outside at the hidden sun readying itself to rise a good hour or so later.

Next to him, Shiro takes off his coat and drapes it over the balcony fence which isn’t nice enough to be called a baluster, really. He takes his jacket off after, reveals a stained white shirt, and wraps it around his waist. His arms cross atop the fence, bends forward, and he lets his head fall down.

His hair isn’t long enough to curtain him away from the world, not like Keith’s.

Like this, he almost looks like a car mechanic who has gotten lost and the Garrison has taken him in until they can figure out how to best send him back home. He doesn’t look like the Garrison’s Golden Boy, he doesn’t look like an Angel carved of marble, represented falsely by artists wanting to deify themselves, and he doesn’t look perfect and composed.

Shiro looks normal. Human. Grease stains his shirt and screams of a man who hasn’t slept and has stayed awake thinking. Pondering. Keith leans on the balcony with him and lets his arms drape off of the fence, lets the cool air wake him up while goosebumps spread on Shiro’s skin. There is a shaky, cold exhale.

“How cold do you think Pluto is?” is what Shiro asks him when he raises his head up again, oily hair dropping in front of his face and Keith glances at him from the corner of his eyes. “How cold do you think it is? Colder than here, for sure, right? Just so cold.” Keith turns his head to look at him fully, but stays quiet. “Don’t wanna put my jacket back on.” he tacks on at the end, answering a question not considered, but Keith doesn’t say anything.

He looks up at the sky. “You look like a car mechanic.” Keith tells him after some time spent in the cold, where Shiro daintily pushes the coat closer to him and he doesn’t take the silent offer. “What are you thinking of, Shiro? You know you can tell me anything.” he says the reminder quietly, almost lost to the softness of the wind, and Shiro hums.

“I’m not thinking of anything for once, but I can start right now if you want.” Shiro begins, and doesn’t end there. “I’m thinking of the Kerberos mission now; I’m thinking of going to Pluto, thinking of breaking the records. I’m thinking of the stars over our heads, thinking of how cold it is, and how stupid I am for not wearing my jacket.

“I’m thinking of Adam. Of mom and dad. Of you. Of how I wish my Japanese was better. Maybe I’ll visit my grandparents after Kerberos. I’m thinking of Venus, and wondering if we’ll ever make anything strong enough to withstand the heat there. Do you think we will, Keith?” he lets the question hang, but he doesn’t answer him. He stares at the sky above, looks at Shiro, and sees his gaze returned. He shrugs his shoulders, and Shiro smiles. “I don’t know either, and I don’t want to guess.”

Keith rolls his shoulders, brings a hand up to massage at his sore neck, and he watches and waits for Shiro to continue talking. To let him continue that verbal onslaught. He watches as kind eyes slip shut, the shadows of exhaustion even heavier on his face, his expression is pinched. “I think about you,” Shiro says, “and I wonder if I’m ever doing anything wrong with you.”

“You’re not.” he squeezes the back of his neck, presses fingers into his own knots. Shiro’s eyes are still closed. “You’ll never do anything wrong.”

There is a brief burst of laughter from Shiro, unsurprised and friendly, and he shakes his head while opening his eyes. “You’re like a black hole sometimes, Keith.” he says as he settles a bit more on his arms now, facing forward and away from him, “and I think, I think you’re going to devour every light in the world around you until you’re the only one shining brightly.”

“You’re the Andromeda galaxy then, Shiro.” Keith says, and he only gets a pensive hum from him. “One day,” he continues on, despite the shivering tone his voice takes on, “we’ll collide with each other.”

There is a brief moment of contemplation, a chuckle following after. “So you’re the Milky Way?” Shiro teases and Keith grunts his affirmative. “Nicer than being a black hole, I suppose.”

“Both’s good.”

They stay out in the balcony only a few moments more, with Keith finally taking the coat when Shiro stubbornly makes no move to put it on, and he drapes it over broad shoulders and gets a raise of an eyebrow. He tugs his own jacket tighter around himself. “Let’s go back in?” he asks and Shiro’s expression falls. “We’re gonna get sick. It’s _cold,_ Shiro, c’mon.”

There is one last lingering look outside, a look that Keith has seen many times, a grim one, tired and battered. His face is too young to appear that conflicted, voice too optimistic to have to voice concerns like that. “Shiro.” Keith tries again, his teeth clacking together, voice a hiss. That seems to get him moving finally, gets him pushing away from the fence, from the outside world, from the desert bathed in fleeting darkness.

“Right. Let’s get you back to bed before classes start.” Shiro says finally, his voice just as strained as Keith’s, and he wraps his coat around himself like a blanket as they leave. He puts the access card in front of the door and lets Keith lead him back to his room, waves goodbye, and then he is gone inside.

He can’t sleep the extra hour after that.

Shiro is back to normal. Sleep-deprived, as always. Hard-working, as always. Busy, as always. And in the end of the day, they fall back on their normal routines.

Keith tempts him with a moment to indulge in a carefree fantasy. Adam reminds him, by absent-presence alone, of his duties. And at the end of the day, even the Garrison’s Golden Boy wants to be set free.

And he doesn’t mind being that moment of escapism for the man who saved him, in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> [ Pillowfort. ](https://www.pillowfort.social/transistor) | [ Tumblr. ](https://transistories.tumblr.com/) | [Twitter.](https://twitter.com/EmptyHeartLover)


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